When Asked How I Cope With Anxiety

There lives a man inside my chest

I can sense him.

Eyes protruding from the tips of my sternum

See all, feel all,

touch, taste, time.

His heart clings to mine

by frayed tubers. A beat all its own. Erratic.

He breathes systematically through straw tunnel chutes

Leading through hollowed out hip bones.

Knobby and covered scantily by a thin sheet of skin.

He can sense me

milling through park pathways. Avoid contact at all cost.

“I am the master of my sanity” sticks in my throat

as he shoves the word back down. It hangs. Hangs. gone.

Avoid contact at all cost.

The directive shot.

He burrows in my brain.

Mashing tissue like a turbine. Until its dead.

He pulls the rope to my hope.

Chokes back words left unsaid.

AVOID CONTACT AT ALL COST.

.

.

.

There lives a man inside my chest.

I can sense him musing all around.

See all. Feel all..

Touch. Taste. Time.

He is the master of my sanity. Not the master of my mind.

And he may smother the life I’ve led

But he can never take away the lives that I have read.

Nor the ones I spill upon a page.

Water Water Everywhere.

But this albatross will not keep me from drinking

Reading

Writing

Trying to escape because

There lives a man inside my chest

To whom may never go away

But at least with a little written word he is kept at bay.

 

This poem is about: 
Me
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